Worked here on windows 7 java 7. Took a long time to load but that might be my computer's fault.

It's a very nice UI. Does it use com.badlogic.gdx.scenes.scene2d.ui or the Themable Widget Library (TWL)?

With regards to pricing, I think that charging more for big studios and for super-successful games is very reasonable. They could easily afford to pay 500 or $1000, and maybe for that price they could also get the source code which would help them tweak/integrate it into their build chain.

The way it exports the data will be interesting. You mentioned something about JSON data, but for noobs making basic java2d games, ideally it would dump out java code with lots of AffineTransform operations in between Graphics2D.drawImage calls which could easily be cut and pasted into their programs.

Well, you do deserve a lot of credit(s) for this, but I think over $70 a pop is overkill. With the framework for this kind of program, you can easily make a few more like it, doing different neat things, and sell each for $35-70. It is correct that it'll almost be impossible to enforce any "if you sell more than X copies" or "mention us in the credits" limitations, but I know I would gladly mention you guys in the credits even if I pay to use the program

The thing is, no matter what kind of protection you choose, someone will crack it anyway. You know this. So there's really no need to complicate those matters for paying users. What they get, is not having to wait for pirates to crack each update (unless they can crack that bit too). Most developers will gladly pay for just that. But then, you sound like you're almost done anyways. So what would they need updates for...?

The way it exports the data will be interesting. You mentioned something about JSON data, but for noobs making basic java2d games, ideally it would dump out java code with lots of AffineTransform operations in between Graphics2D.drawImage calls which could easily be cut and pasted into their programs.

Does it use com.badlogic.gdx.scenes.scene2d.ui or the Themable Widget Library (TWL)?

Sooooomebody didn't read the wall of text! scene2d.ui FTW!

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With regards to pricing, I think that charging more for big studios and for super-successful games is very reasonable. They could easily afford to pay 500 or $1000, and maybe for that price they could also get the source code which would help them tweak/integrate it into their build chain.

We wouldn't give out the editor's source code. The runtime code that you use in your game will be available though. Doing that reduces support needs a little, so I'm not sure if it would be good for users to need to pay more to get the source.

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The way it exports the data will be interesting. You mentioned something about JSON data, but for noobs making basic java2d games, ideally it would dump out java code with lots of AffineTransform operations in between Graphics2D.drawImage calls which could easily be cut and pasted into their programs.

Honestly I have a hard time taking Java2D games seriously. Don't get me wrong, cool stuff can be done there, but I feel like using a gaming oriented API (like say, libgdx ) is both easier and has greater potential for games.

The plan is to have a runtime library for each of many gaming libraries. This is already done for libgdx, as the editor uses the same code that would be used in a libgdx game. I will then port that to other libraries like Unity, cocos2d, etc. I'm not looking forward to that. Java2D could be a target, but it is low on the list. The data will be available as JSON so you could write your own runtime stuff, but it is not trivial to get it right. It's only about 1200 LOC for libgdx, including reading JSON and binary, but there are some quite tricky lines. FWIW, the editor is ~15k LOC (using the CLOC tool, unscaled numbers). This doesn't include scene2d or libgdx of course, which is something like 150k LOC in total.

With the framework for this kind of program, you can easily make a few more like it, doing different neat things, and sell each for $35-70.

Great, now I've spit my beverage all over my monitor. I don't see what other programs are similar enough that a large portion of Spine could be reused. Sure, any GUI app could be built with scene2d, but Spine has taken an enormous amount of effort to solve the problems it needs to solve in a user friendly and polished manner. It has been about 4 months of work full time each for an artist and a coder, pushing it hard. It'd be that all over again for another, different app of the same complexity. For some perspective, let's call it 8 man months, assume we can make $100k/year at a real job (this is low), and we can estimate Spine has costed ~$70k just to get it into a beta state. In reality it would be more, because there is no way we'd bust our asses like this for an employer.

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no matter what kind of protection you choose, someone will crack it anyway.

Oh, there's no need to discuss copyright protection. I'm just interested in what price point would be reasonable for paying users. FWIW, the trial can't be cracked because the export code is not in it. It can be decompiled and you can write your own export, but that's a lot of work. The full version could be shared, but those people are lame.

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But then, you sound like you're almost done anyways. So what would they need updates for...?

Ha! You're killing me here. There is a very, very long list of features we'd love to see. It has been a struggle so far to reduce scope and not try to do too much, else we'd never finish. The biggest piece that is missing right now is the runtime for various game libraries.

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Bottom line: I'd happily pay around $40-45.

Noted, thanks. Does anyone else think a ~$50 price point is about right? (see what I did there, bumping it up by $5 )

Yeah, well, when you put it like that. I hope you didn't feel like I was putting you guys down or anything. I was just trying to raise some realistic points to consider.

And all I meant was, the general setup and smooth design is not something you should have to do again for something similar. I could think of a bunch of little programs that need a GUI just like that one; drawing and connecting lines, the touchpad-interface with the waveform and such. With your imagination and skill, you could make a fortune.

And well, it just sounded like the runtimes were the last things on your list. It seems almost complete for what it is.

Haha, no worries, our Internet feelings aren't hurt so easily. I just think it takes quite a bit for a tool to be useful enough that someone would want to buy it. It also has to be a hard enough problem that others haven't solved it (very well). Even then there is a chance someone will put up some OSS to obsolete the commercial tool.

Eg, TexturePackerPro is a GUI tool that packs sprites and Andreas has done pretty well selling it. I wrote a (sweet) texture packer in libgdx just because I wanted a command line tool with specific features. Aurelien wrote a GUI for it and now there is a free alternative to TexturePackerPro. Aurelien also wrote a "physics editor" as a free alternative to Andreas' commercial physics editor tool. I don't know if Aurelien has it out for the guy or what, but if people are going to buy a tool it needs to bring something pretty serious to the table.

Java 7's WatchService doesn't watch subdirectories. Windows has native support for this, Linux doesn't, so we get the LCD. JNotify handled it for you (well was supposed to, had it worked on Linux). Oh well, I'll just add a bunch of watches and call it a day! Nice part is the download size will drop since I don't need so many natives.

The links in the first post have been updated to 0.81beta. The filesystem notification has been rewritten using Java 7, though the app will still run on Java 6 (though with no automatic image updating). I tested on Windows and Linux, but should work on Mac.

Other LWJGL applications work correctly on this computer ( like my game .. ), so I don't know what's wrong here.For info I have 2 monitors. The java version is 1.6.0_26.

Otherwise I also tried it on a win7 64 machine, and everything worked fine. The ui is really amazing ... to the point that I'm thinking very seriously to use scene2d.ui instead of SWT for the UI of my map editor. Already tried to integrate some widgets on top of my map display and it worked great

A friend told me about spriter I really liked the idea but it crashed too much. Then I saw that other one on here and was like, "nice nice" Then this.... ....... ....... ........ ........ ...... ........ ....... ........ .........

Usually this means that you don't have OpenGL. If other LWJGL apps work, I guess something about the why libgdx uses LWJGL causes this on your system. This could be important to fix for both Spine and libgdx. Not really sure where to start though.

I guess your OS GUI doesn't run Java automatically? Can you suggest a better way to package the app for Linux, so users don't have to know to use "java -jar ..."?

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scene2d.ui seems really cool but I don't know how to make it work with Ardor3D. I would like to use it with JOGL 2.0 in JFPSM.

scene2d uses a number of classes from libgdx. You'd have to port quite a bit to get it to work elsewhere, it wasn't designed for that. Much of it is not libgdx specific but sprite batching, textures, utility classes, collections, etc are. Basically, you'd have to fork it (which would be perfectly fine with me if you wanted to).

Ran fine on my laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 on both OpenJDK and Oracle (both 6 and 7). Double click ran it as expected, but I think I had previously changed my settings for jar files. I suppose you could bundle a shell script to start it if it is a concern. Also, I went ahead and tried changing graphics in the file system, and they updated in Spine automatically.

Again, nicely done. I wish I had something to use it for, but I lack any sort of talent in that area.

Usually this means that you don't have OpenGL. If other LWJGL apps work, I guess something about the why libgdx uses LWJGL causes this on your system. This could be important to fix for both Spine and libgdx. Not really sure where to start though.

There is an option in LWJGL to allow "software" OpenGL (Microsoft GDI OpenGL emulation through Direct3D):org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.allowSoftwareOpenGL=true

scene2d.ui seems really cool but I don't know how to make it work with Ardor3D. I would like to use it with JOGL 2.0 in JFPSM.

scene2d uses a number of classes from libgdx. You'd have to port quite a bit to get it to work elsewhere, it wasn't designed for that. Much of it is not libgdx specific but sprite batching, textures, utility classes, collections, etc are. Basically, you'd have to fork it (which would be perfectly fine with me if you wanted to).

Ok. I will have to write a LibGDX backend based on JOGL 2.0 in some months. Maybe I will try to port some components from scene2d.ui to Ardor3D UI.

This is a really lovely little animation toolkit! Can't wait to throw some money at it when a libGDX exporter becomes available. Price of a new game seems fair. $50-$60 range -(alpha release discount?)

Got my character in and walking in about an hour, rock steady, smooth as butter, Intuitive keyframing. Some of the UI buttons could be a bit more intuitive tho.

I went ahead and tried changing graphics in the file system, and they updated in Spine automatically.

Again, nicely done. I wish I had something to use it for, but I lack any sort of talent in that area.

Thanks for testing that out. Pretty happy with the file watch stuff in Java 7. Bit of a weird API, but it took only ~100 lines of code to have dir watching functionality that fails gracefully on Java 6.

I think Spine is good for us talentless developers. If you can source graphics somewhere, you can get quite a lot out of them if you do the animation yourself. Also it can be used for non-character animation, like GUI transitions or effects (explosions, etc).

That's right, I forgot about that. I'll enable it and if software is used I'll put up a warning alert box that the app may be slow. I'll also put in a shell script. I guess naming it "run.sh" is obvious enough?

Ok. I will have to write a LibGDX backend based on JOGL 2.0 in some months. Maybe I will try to port some components from scene2d.ui to Ardor3D UI.

Note that while scene2d supports rotation and scale of actor groups, this is not typically used with scene2d.ui (though it doeswork, mouse input, hit detection and all). In fact, some functionality is only for use with screen aligned actors (such as clipping). When porting scene2d for UIs, rotation and scale could be omitted. Then again, it is probably easier to port without changing functionality at the same time.

Got my character in and walking in about an hour, rock steady, smooth as butter, Intuitive keyframing. Some of the UI buttons could be a bit more intuitive tho.

Thanks for your thoughts on the price. Glad to hear you got up and running so quickly! Super cool. Got a screenshot? Which UI buttons did you find were not intuitive? Note you can hover over a button for 2 seconds to get a tooltip. Press F1 to get tooltips without waiting the 2 seconds.

Got my character in and walking in about an hour, rock steady, smooth as butter, Intuitive keyframing. Some of the UI buttons could be a bit more intuitive tho.

Cool, really looking forward to seeing what other people will create with spine. If you can tell us what it is you don't find intuitive, we will definitely look into what options we have to improve it.

Well I've since watched the 5 minute video and things make a lot more sense now.

Couple little things:- When in setup - pose mode and dragging an image onto the selected bone in the hiarchy tree it works but the display does not update to reflect it (and since you cant drag images onto the stage in pose mode anyway maybe you should just disable dragging on images in pose mode) In fact, dragging images into the scene in pose mode is the only crash I've found.- When Adding bones on top of an image attached to another bone er.. well you cant.. it selects the image instead of starting the bone. - If you add a bone directly on top of another bone (ie to make 2 identical leg chains) the bones dont parent properly.- I keep pressing A wanting to add another bone (old habits).. is there a shortcut for that? or anything else with shortcuts should be listed on the tooltips. - Adjusting the draw order allows you to select multiple images, but when you drag em only one of them gets moved.- Also in the Draw order. I have a slot called Bone4.. It would be cool to have the contained images highlight in the skeleton above or on the stage so I can see where that is.

Here's a screenshot of my goblin swingin his pick, :-) He's a bit blurry because the actual character is only ~ 100px tall

So I go to try this and gives me an error. Look at the error and it says openGL is not supported by the video drivers which is bull as I have run just about everything anyone else has posted on here with no hiccups.

That's right, I forgot about that. I'll enable it and if software is used I'll put up a warning alert box that the app may be slow. I'll also put in a shell script. I guess naming it "run.sh" is obvious enough?

If you want, I can provide you a small piece of code to detect the GDI crap, I just have to port these few lines to LWJGL. Yes "run.sh" is nice.

Ok. I will have to write a LibGDX backend based on JOGL 2.0 in some months. Maybe I will try to port some components from scene2d.ui to Ardor3D UI.

Note that while scene2d supports rotation and scale of actor groups, this is not typically used with scene2d.ui (though it doeswork, mouse input, hit detection and all). In fact, some functionality is only for use with screen aligned actors (such as clipping). When porting scene2d for UIs, rotation and scale could be omitted. Then again, it is probably easier to port without changing functionality at the same time.

At first, I will port the current backend from JOGL 1 to JOGL 2.0, maybe with NEWT + NEWT/AWT/SWT bridges too if it is ok for you. Then, I will try to understand how you render some components I would like to port to Ardor3D UI.

I've updated the download links in the first post to version 0.82beta. This fixes a few crash bugs, fixes the app not running on some computers, adds a splash screen, and various other fixes and polish. Can someone try it on Mac and Linux to see if the splash screen is shown there? You're the breast!

Drakkheim, thanks for taking the time to provide your feedback! And that is a super cool goblin you have!

- When in setup - pose mode and dragging an image onto the selected bone in the hiarchy tree it works but the display does not update to reflect it (and since you cant drag images onto the stage in pose mode anyway maybe you should just disable dragging on images in pose mode) In fact, dragging images into the scene in pose mode is the only crash I've found.

In setup mode you should be able to drag from the tree directly into the editor. This attaches the image to the root bone. You can also drag directly to a bone in the tree. There was a nasty bug I finally tracked down where sometimes image drag and drop stopped working. It is fixed in version 0.82beta so hopefully you are good now.

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- When Adding bones on top of an image attached to another bone er.. well you cant.. it selects the image instead of starting the bone.

True, but use the "Options" pane to disable selection of images.

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- If you add a bone directly on top of another bone (ie to make 2 identical leg chains) the bones dont parent properly.

Not sure what you mean here. When you create a new bone, it uses the currently selected bone as the parent. So, be sure you have the correct bone selected when you create the second leg.

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- I keep pressing A wanting to add another bone (old habits).. is there a shortcut for that? or anything else with shortcuts should be listed on the tooltips.

Version 0.82beta now has hotkeys. They are not yet listed in the tooltips though, will do that soon.

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- Adjusting the draw order allows you to select multiple images, but when you drag em only one of them gets moved.

Yea, the tree allows multiple selection (for the tree's property pane) but drag and drop doesn't. It makes my life so much easier! I might come back and change this later.

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- Also in the Draw order. I have a slot called Bone4.. It would be cool to have the contained images highlight in the skeleton above or on the stage so I can see where that is.

Agreed, I will make it select the image in the editor when you select a slot in the tree.

So I go to try this and gives me an error. Look at the error and it says openGL is not supported by the video drivers which is bull as I have run just about everything anyone else has posted on here with no hiccups.

This is the same issue deathpat had. I believe this is now fixed in version 0.82beta. Can you guys give it a whirl?

If you want, I can provide you a small piece of code to detect the GDI crap, I just have to port these few lines to LWJGL. Yes "run.sh" is nice.

Yes, I would like that, thank you. If it is easier, you can just post what you have and I can port to LWJGL. Starting with 0.82beta the Linux download has a run.sh.

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Ok. I will have to write a LibGDX backend based on JOGL 2.0 in some months. Maybe I will try to port some components from At first, I will port the current backend from JOGL 1 to JOGL 2.0, maybe with NEWT + NEWT/AWT/SWT bridges too if it is ok for you. Then, I will try to understand how you render some components I would like to port to Ardor3D UI.

By all means, port away! I hope you will find the scene2d widgets very simple.

Can someone try it on Mac and Linux to see if the splash screen is shown there? You're the breast!

Yes. Works here. Splash screen shows, loading text shows...

One issue I've just found: When you move the view with right-click, then it somehow jitters around... when releasing the mouse everything looks right, but when holding the mouse and moving, it looks very strange.

One issue I've just found: When you move the view with right-click, then it somehow jitters around... when releasing the mouse everything looks right, but when holding the mouse and moving, it looks very strange.

Thanks. This jitter happens on Linux? I see something sort of similar (I think) happening in VirtualBox. What exactly do you mean by it looks strange?

Oh god oh god oh god... Can you edit the Contents/Info.plist? I'm guessing the "-splash:splash.png" entry in "VMOptions" is keeping it from running. With that gone does it run and show a splash screen? Maybe removing the entire VMOptions section would help?

One issue I've just found: When you move the view with right-click, then it somehow jitters around... when releasing the mouse everything looks right, but when holding the mouse and moving, it looks very strange.

Thanks. This jitter happens on Linux? I see something sort of similar (I think) happening in VirtualBox. What exactly do you mean by it looks strange?

Yes. Archlinux, Java7.

Erm... it jumps between two positions rapidly when moving the view. It's hard to explain really The faster I move the mouse the more "difference" is between those two positions. Probably this is due to some "smoothing" code... probably? (Probably because the input handling differs in linux)

Changing the Info.plist didn't do anything, but here is the log file I didn't see earlier:[snip]As you can see I don't have Java7...

Oh, that exception shouldn't be printed. It tries to use the Java7 file watch stuff, but fails gracefully. It gets to "Started" so the app should work! I'm betting that log is from when you ran the JAR, and that running Spine.app doesn't get that far. Literally the only thing I changed is the Info.plist. Maybe you can try this one?

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